In loving Memory of, Derek Brian Ward - Crew Member SS Runic

Derek was the first electrical officer serving on the SS Runic, a Harland and
Wolff built refrigerated cargo vessel that famously ran aground
in 1961, on the Middleton Reef in the Tasman Sea while sailing
from Australia to New Zealand. Derek was part of the crew,
and was stuck on the ship as all the rescue attempts failed. He often
told us how he spent several weeks on the broken-backed ship,
swimming every day in the blue shallow water, despite the sea
in the area being rich with sharks. It sounded magical, how
something so catastrophic as a shipwreck could result in such
wonder. The ship had grounded in the February of ‘61, in the
height of the summer in the Southern Hemisphere, and the crew
stayed on board right through to near the end of March, when
the ship was declared unsalvageable and her crew transferred
onto another Shaw, Savill vessel. Derek sadly passed away in 2022. You can read about him in the second edition of my first book in chapter 32 A Sailors Tale. Find it on Amazon
The Darkest Path The Paranormal and our layered reality by David J Chapman.